Near-Infrared Polarization Source Catalog of Northeastern Regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud

  • Published : 2015.10.15

Abstract

We present a near-infrared photometric and polarimetric catalog of sources in the $39^{\prime}{\times}69^{\prime}$ fields on the northeastern part of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which was observed using SIRPOL, an imaging polarimeter of the Infrared Survey Facility (IRSF). This catalog contains 1,858 sources brighter than 14 mag at H band with polarization signal-to-noise ratio greater than 3 in at least one of J, H, and Ks bands. We examined the polarization structures around the star-forming regions, where coherent polarization position angle distributions are seen. We also estimated magnetic field strengths in some selected fields using Chandrasekhar and Fermi analysis. The magnetic field strengths are estimated to be $3{\sim}25{\mu}G$. The wavelength dependence of polarization degrees indicates that the polarization is most likely to be originated from dichroic extinctions by the local interstellar dusts in the LMC. We found that the polarization patterns are well aligned along the molecular clouds around star-forming regions.

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